Infinity Blade III

There’s a good reason why new Infinity Blade games always take center stage at Apple’s hardware unveilings. With each new installment, the series pushes the limits of what can be achieved visually on mobile devices. Infinity Blade III offers the incredible visuals that players are expecting, but it also feels like it’s reviving the same old mechanics, with only slight improvements.

It makes sense that this third Infinity Blade game should feel a bit familiar. The overarching theme of the Infinity Blade series is a cycle of death and rebirth, with a hero who becomes gradually more experienced despite consistent (and expected) failure. In the first game, this rebirth mechanic allowed players to revisit a solitary castle over and over again, gaining strength through generations of heroes, slowly building up your skills until you could defeat the God King.

This mechanic originated as a clever way to encourage replayability, without forcing the developers to build a sprawling game world. But in Infinity Blade III, this repetition can become tiresome, especially because the game includes an expanded storyline and progression of environments. Forcing players to repeatedly spend time in smaller zones doesn’t advance the story– it just puts everything on pause until the player is strong enough to defeat an end-level boss.

Another reason these combat zones can feel unexciting is because the gameplay mechanics haven’t changed since the last game. You’ll still approach each enemy individually, use swipes and taps on the touchscreen to dodge, defend, and attack, and then count up your experience points after the match is over. Between fights, you can enjoy gorgeously-rendered backgrounds and hunt for hidden resources, but the core combat is exactly the same.

In the past few years, games like Horn and Avengers Initiative have improved on Infinity Blade’s swipe combat by adding additional movement, breakable environments, and special abilities. Infinity Blade III seems content to just add frightful new monsters and pretty backgrounds, instead of improving on the original gameplay.

Infinity Blade III does make several improvements outside of the core fighting, though. In addition to Siris, you can now play as a second character, Isa. Isa has her own unique armor and gear, but you’ll have to level her up separately from Siris. It can feel like a bit of a downgrade when you are forced to switch from a high-level character back to the other, with fewer abilities and weaker gear.

Isa also feels like a missed opportunity for new kinds of gameplay. Her missions show her creeping around in the shadows and firing crossbow bolts at enemies. At first, we were hopeful this indicated a new stealth mode. After all, why should these characters duel their enemies like noble knights, instead of just picking them off quietly? But Isa’s crossbow is just for show– you still have to walk up to each enemy and engage them in a one-on-one fight, with no visible damage from the crossbow.

In addition to the extra playable character, in Infinity Blade III you can brew potions, and eventually, utilize a blacksmith to improve your weapons and armor. Each of these actions requires collecting a lot of resources (herbs are now scattered throughout the levels, in addition to gold), and they each have their own countdown timers. You can bypass the timers by spending in-game premium currency, which is acquired by achieving specific goals, like taking down an enemy without receiving damage. You can also hurry along the process by dying in the game, waiting patiently, or spending real-world money.

The potions and blacksmith add a new degree of depth, as does a merchant ship which offers special discounts on high-end gear. You may still find yourself unable to purchase expensive, brand-new armor, and like in the previous games, once you’ve maxed out a particular piece of gear, you’ll miss out on experience points until you equip something new. This forces the player to constantly change gear, which means that even if you become attached to a particular item, your use for it is only temporary.

Infinity Blade III has a storyline that’s more involved than the previous games, partly because the two main characters will split up and explore different zones while they try to gather their strength for a final attack on the main villain. Even with new supporting characters and a variety of environments, from castles to desert ruins, the combat starts to feel repetitive before long. Even the available side-missions, like individual challenges and Clash Mobs, stretch the original concept fairly thin.

In many ways, Infinity Blade III is grandiose and gorgeous, and the gear that you can unlock is exquisitely detailed. However, the taps and swipes that propel the actual gameplay are starting to feel like the least engaging part of the experience. If you loved the first two games, you will definitely want to see the new environments and characters that inhabit this strange, anachronistic world. Just be prepared to go through the same motions– literally– again and again.

Connect with us

Latest Recommended Games

The fine folks at Milkbag games have released Sidewords. A fun little diversion of a word game that is the devil child of crosswords and scrabble. For each level in the game the grid must be completed to win the level — this means that each letter at the top and side must be used. And not just the top or side, but each word must be made up of letters from the top and side to create a grid. It’s a pain, but in the right kind of way. Even the simplest of the levels can be a head scratcher until you get used to the game. Well worth the $3 as a diversion while we wait for Milkbag to finally release Snow Siege.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math.

It’s not always easy to tear your kids away from their tablets and make them do something edifying. Thankfully, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math relieves you of this task by turning mathematics into a fun touchscreen video game. Win win!

Aimed at children 3-6 years old, the app makes math fun by ‘gamifying’ it, turning simple mathematics problems into little challenges so that your pre-schooler can learn and play at the same time.

There are more than two dozen mini-games, split across three categories: Numbers, Shapes and Measurements, and Add and Subtract. According to the developer the difficulty of these puzzles is adaptive too, so kids of any ability can be both encouraged and challenged.

Mini Dayz has launched and it’s a pixelated 2.5D open world that’s as brutal as the desktop version. In this game, the player is dumped on shore with nothing. They must scavenge around for food, water, and weapons while avoiding attack. It’s the kind of game where the goal is to stay alive as long as possible. But that will never be very long. It’s oddly free and seems to only have an ad on the main screen — for now.

Pewter Games has brought their charming point and click adventure The Little Acre to iOS. It’s an amazingly beautiful animated adventure set in a sort of hybrid magical / alien world. A great all ages adventure and very fun.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, The House of Da Vinci by Blue Brain Games. There’s a reason Leonardo Da Vinci is the only renaissance figure who routinely shows up in video games you know. With his remarkable inventiveness and genius for creative problem-solving, Da Vinci was a gamer through and through. He was just born 500 hundred years too soon. Thankfully, there are studios like Blue Brain Games to bring him to life in videogame form. The House of Da Vinci, which comes to us courtesy of a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, is a puzzler that seeks to channel the artistry and innovation of its title character.

You play as one of Da Vinci’s more promising apprentices, and you have the challenging task of trying to work out where the hell he’s gone. Was he assassinated by the church? Who knows. Has he quietly gone into a retirement? Perhaps. Did he accidentally invent a shrink ray and shrink himself down to the size of an dustmite? Probably not. Da Vinci’s workshop looks beautiful, thanks to some impressive 3D graphics, and the in-game environment is crammed with all the elaborate machines and crazy inventions you’d expect to find in the workplace of a renaissance genius.(more…)

Poly Bridge is out now on iOS, and it’s good to have it! It’s a great game and many seem to agree that it’s the best bridge builder game available. But the iOS versions, so far, is missing the sandbox mode. I would hope that it’s coming soon in an update. If you are all interested in physics puzzlers, grab this one. (Note: the video is for the PC version, I have yet to see a trailer for the mobile version, the developer Dry Cactus isn’t that great at marketing…)

Advertisement

Apple, the Apple logo, Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Other terms may be trademarks of their respective companies.